The Mating of Lydia Part 23

"I'd give a good deal to see you break your heart!" said the tragedienne, her dark eyes kindling--"you'd be just splendid!"

"Thanks, awfully! There's the pony."

Susan held her.

"You're really going to the Tower?"

"I am. It's mean of me. When you hate a man, you oughtn't to go to his house. But I can't help it. I'm so curious."

"Yes, but not about Mr. Melrose," said Susan slowly.

Lydia flushed suddenly from brow to chin.

"Goose! let me go."

Susan let her go, and then stood a while, absorbed, looking at the mysterious Tower. Her power of visualization was uncannily strong; it amounted almost to second sight. She seemed to be in the Tower--in one of its locked and shuttered rooms; to be looking at a young man stretched on a sofa--a wizardlike figure in a black cloak standing near--and in the doorway, Lydia entering, bringing the light on her fair hair....

VIII

Tatham had to open the gate of Threlfall Park for himself. The lodge beside it, of the same date and architecture as the house, had long ceased to be inhabited. The gate was a substantial iron affair, and carried a placard, peremptorily directing the person entering to close it behind him. And on either side of it, the great wall stretched away with which, some ten years before this date, Melrose, at incredible cost, had surrounded the greater part of his property, in consequence of a quarrel with the local hunt, and to prevent its members from riding over his land.

Tatham, having carefully shut the gate, rode slowly through the park, casting a curious and hostile eye over the signs of parsimonious neglect which it presented. Sheep and cattle were feeding in part of it; part of it was standing for hay; and everywhere the fences were ruinous, and the roads gra.s.s-grown. It was, Tatham knew, let out to various small farmers, who used it as they pleased. As to the woods which studded it, "the man must be a simple fool who could let them get into such a state!" Tatham prided himself hugely on the admirable forestry with which the large tracts of woodland in his own property were managed. But then he paid a proper salary to a trained forester, a man of education. Melrose's woods, with their choked and ruined timber, were but another proof that a miser is, scientifically, only a species of idiot.

Only once before in his life had he been within the park--on one of the hunts of his boyhood, the famous occasion when the fox, started on the other side of the river, had made straight for Threlfall, and, the gate closing the private foot-bridge having been, by a most unusual chance, left open, had slipped thereby into the park, with the hounds in full cry after him. The hunt had momentarily paused, and then breaking loose from all control had dashed through the yard of the Home Farm in joyous pursuit, while the enraged Melrose, who with Dixon and another man had rushed out with sticks to try and head them back, had to confine himself and his followers to manning the enclosure round the house--impotent spectators of the splendid run through the park--which had long remained famous in c.u.mbrian annals. Tatham was then a lad of fourteen, mounted on one of the best of ponies, and he well remembered the mad gallop which had carried him past the Tower, and the tall figure of its furious master. The glee, the malicious triumph of the moment ran through his pulses again as he thought of it.

A short-lived triumph indeed, as far as the hunt was concerned; for the building of the ten-foot wall had followed, and Melrose's final breach with the gentry of his county. Never since had Tatham set foot in the Ogre's demesne; and he examined every feature of it with the most lively interest. The dilapidated buildings of the Home Farm reminded him of a lawsuit brought by a former tenant against his landlord, in which a story of mean and rapacious dealing on the part of Melrose, toward a decent though unfortunate man, had excited the disgust of the whole countryside.

Melrose had never since been able to find a tenant for the farm, and the bailiff he had put in was a drunken creature whose mismanagement of it was notorious. Such doings by a man so inhumanly shrewd as Melrose in many of his affairs could only be accounted for by the combination in him of miserly dislike of spending, with a violent self-will. Instances, however, had been known when to get his own way, or gain a sinister advantage over an opponent, Melrose had been willing to spend extravagantly.

After pa.s.sing the farm, Tatham pressed on eagerly, expecting the first sight of the house. The dense growth of shrub and creeper, which had been allowed to grow up around it, the home according to the popular legend of uncanny mult.i.tudes of owls and bats, tickled imagination; and Tatham had often brought a field-gla.s.s to bear upon the house from one of the neighbouring hills. But as he turned the last corner of the drive he drew up his horse in amazement.

The jungle was gone--! and the simple yet stately architecture of the house stood revealed in the summer sunshine. In the west wing, indeed, the windows were still shuttered, and many of them overgrown with ivy; but the dingy thickets of laurel and yew were everywhere shorn away; and to the east all the windows stood free and open. Moreover, two men were at work in the front garden, clearing the flagged paths, traced in the eighteenth century, from enc.u.mbrance, and laying down turf in a green circle round one of the small cla.s.sical fountains that stood on either side of the approach.

"What on earth is the old villain up to now?" was the natural comment of the surprised Tatham.

Was it simply the advent of a guest--an invalid guest--that had wrought such changes?

One of the gardeners, seeing him as he approached the gate, came running up to hold his horse. Tatham, who knew everybody and prided himself on it, recognized him as the son of an old Duddon keeper.

"Well, Backhouse, you're making a fine clearance here!"

"Aye! It's took us days, your lordship. But we're about through wi' this side, howivver." He pointed to the east wing.

"One can see now what a jolly old place it is," said Tatham, pausing in the gateway to survey the scene.

Backhouse grinned responsively.

"I do believe, my lord, Muster Melrose hissel' is pleased. He stood a lang while lookin' at it this morning, afore he started oot."

"Well, no one can deny it's an improvement!" laughed Tatham, as he walked toward the house.

Dixon had already opened the door. Slave and factotum of Melrose as he was, he shared the common liking of the neighbourhood for young Lord Tatham. Two of his brothers were farmers on the Duddon estate; and one of them owed his recovery from a dangerous and obscure illness to the fact that, at the critical moment, Tatham had brought over a specialist from Leeds to see him, paying all expenses. These things--and others besides--were reflected in the rather tremulous smile with which Dixon received the visitor.

"Mr. Faversham expects me?"

"Aye, aye, my lord." The old man quickly led the way through the front hall, more quickly than Tatham's curiosity liked. He had time to notice, however, the domed and decorated ceiling, the cla.s.sical mantelpiece, with its medallions and its pillars of Sienese marble, a couple of bold Renaissance cabinets on either side, and a central table, resting on carved sphinxes, such as one might find in the _sala_ of a Venetian palace.

But as they turned into the corridor or gallery Tatham's exclamation brought Dixon to a halt. He faced round upon the young man, revealing a face that worked with hardly repressed excitement, and explained that the furnishing and arrangement had been only completed that day. It had taken them eight days, and Barclay's men were only just gone.

Tatham frankly expressed his surprise and admiration. The whole gallery and both of its terminal windows had now been cleared. The famous series of rose-coloured tapestries, of which Undershaw had seen the first specimens, had been hung at intervals throughout its length; and from the stores of the house had been brought out more carpets, more cabinets, mirrors, pictures, fine eighteenth-century chairs, settees, occasional tables, and what not. Hastily as it had been done, the brilliance of the effect was great. There was not, there could not be, the beauty that comes from old use and habit--from the ordered life of generations moving among and gradually adapting to itself a number of lovely things. Tatham brought up amid the surroundings of Duddon was scornfully conscious of the bric-a-brac element in the show, as he stood contemplating Melrose's latest performance. Nevertheless a fine taste had presided both at the original selection of the things shown, and at the arrangement of them in the stately gallery, which both harmonized and displayed them.

"There's not a thing yo' see, my lord, that hasna been here--i' this house--for years and years!" said Dixon, pointing a shaky finger at the cabinets on either side. "There's soom o' them has been i' their packing-cases ever sin' I can remember, an' the carpets rolled up aw deep in dust. And there's not a thing been unpacked now i' the house itsel', for fear o' t' dust, an' Mr. Faversham. The men carried it aw oot o' that door"--he pointed to the far western end of the gallery--"an'

iverything was doon out o' doors, all t' carpets beaten an' aw, where Mr.

Faversham couldna hear a sound. An' yesterday Muster Melrose and Muster Faversham--we browt him in his wheeled chair yo' unnerstan'--fixed up a lot o' things together. We havna nailed doon th' matting yet, for fear o't' noise. But Muster Faversham says noo he won't mind it."

"Is Mr. Faversham staying on some time?"

"I canno' say, my lord, I'm sure," was the cautious reply. "But they do say 'at he's not to tak' a journey for a while yet."

Tatham's curiosity was hot within him, but his very dislike of Melrose restrained him from indulging it. He followed Dixon through the gallery in silence.

There was no one in the new sitting-room. But outside on some newly laid gra.s.s, Tatham perceived the invalid on a deck chair, with a table holding books and cigarettes beside him.

Dixon had departed. Faversham offered cigarettes.

"Thank you," said Tatham, "I have my own."

And he produced his case with a smile, handing it to Faversham.

"A drink?"

Tatham declined again. As he sat there smoking, his hat on the back of his head, and his ruddy, good-humoured face beaming on his companion, it did not occur to Faversham that Tatham was thereby refusing the "salt" of an enemy.

"They'll bring some tea when Mrs. and Miss Penfold come," said Faversham.

Tatham nodded, then grinned irrepressibly.

"I say! I told Miss Penfold she'd find you in 'piggery.'"

Faversham's dark face showed a certain discomposure. Physical delicacy had given a peculiar distinction to the gaunt black and white of his eyes, hair, and complexion, and to the thinness of his long frame, so that Tatham, who would have said before seeing him that he remembered him perfectly, found himself looking at him from time to time in surprise. As to his surroundings, Faversham appeared not only willing but anxious to explain.

"It's a queer business," he said frankly. "I can a.s.sure I you I never asked for anything, never wished for anything of the sort. Everything was arranged for me to go to Keswick--to a home there--when--this happened."

"When old Melrose broke out!" Tatham threw back his head and gurgled with laughter. "I suppose you know that n.o.body but yourself has ever had bite or sup in this house for twenty years, unless it were some of the dealers, who--they say--come occasionally. What have you done to him?

You've cast a spell on him!"